Intel from Praxis Prepper
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." – Benjamin Franklin
Check out this reply from Praxis Prepper when we asked about YouTube censorship.
I'm happy to fill you in with what I know. Here's a graphic of my channel's performance since I started it:
You can see the severe dips during covid and the 2024 election season. The year 2020 actually still looks like it was higher than 2019, but that's only because (before the clamp down) my channel's viewership skyrocketed for the first few months of 2020 prior to Youtube (and pretty much every other part of society) clamping down on "misinformation".
As it turns out, everything I was suggesting back then was actually the truth, and the official narrative was the misinformation.
Today people accept things like "covid could have plausibly escaped from a lab", "the covid shots were unlikely to offer long-term protection to a rapidly mutating virus", "the effectiveness of natural immunity is on par with vaccination", or "the covid shots were rushed through safety checks and may have more issues than is immediately apparent"... well, I think people are still in the process of digesting and accepting that last one, but overall, the world has come around to my view of things back then when I was being shut down to prevent lies from spreading.
Same thing happened during the run up to the 2024 election. I was saying things like, "Biden is a weak candidate with clear signs of cognitive decline", "Biden will likely drop out", "Harris will be put forward as his replacement", and that "Donald Trump will be the likely winner". Those all turned out to be true as well (although I was expecting the election results to be a lot closer than they ended up being). So my general view is that when there is the perception of a national emergency apparent, Youtube stomps down on non"on-message" channels. That's my thinking anyhow.
My channel is rather weak in general due to how eclectic it is in terms of topics (Youtube favors channels that release consistently predictable content aimed at a specific area of interest). So where other channels have been able to face the headwinds of Youtube somewhat, my channel really gets hammered and stays down for a while after each event.
I used to run a sci fi series on my channel. It was about emergency preparedness, but had an alien invasion theme for fun. People loved it. more than 10,000 people subbed to my channel just because of the first season of that series. The 2nd season came out AFTER Youtube crushed my channel during covid. Of the 10,000+ people who subbed to my channel specifically because they enjoyed the Alien Invasion series, only about 200 bothered to watch the trailer for the 2nd season when I released it. The number 200 at the time was about on par with how many hard core fans my channel had - people who show up for every video. So essentially 0% of the 10,000 new subs who had asked to be notified when season 2 came out, bothered to watch it. That seemed... "unlikely" to me.
Additionally, I have heard from many subscribers telling me that Youtube unsubscribed them without their knowing about it. They had thought that I had stopped making videos, missed my content, but then chanced across me later and found they'd be unsubbed and I'd been releasing videos all along. A few people have noted that this had happened to them multiple times. I presume they're the tip of the iceberg, because most people probably don't even realize they were unsubbed, and of those who do, I'd imagine quite a few of those don't bother to write to me about it.
So those are my experiences. Good luck with your work.
Q&A:
Have you ever been shadow-banned, low or de-monetized, or deplatformed? - HARD TO KNOW FOR SURE, BUT WHAT PEOPLE DESCRIBE AS SHADOW BANNING SEEMS TO APPLY TO MY CHANNEL.
Do you know anyone who has? - CAN'T SAY FOR SURE.
How did that or how does that impact you? - THE FEELING THAT MY VIDEOS WONT BE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE REQUESTED THEY BE NOTIFIED WHEN I RELEASE THEM IS DEMOTIVATING IN TERMS OF MY DESIRE TO KEEP MAKING TOP NOTCH VIDEOS - PUTTING IN A LOT OF WORK ONLY TO HAVE YOUTUBE HIDE THEM FROM THE SUBSCRIBERS.
How did it get resolved? - IT HASN'T
How do you mitigate the impact? - I STOPPED PUTTING IN AS MUCH EFFORT ON VIDEOS. I USED TO RUN A SCI FI SERIES FULL OF VFX. I HAD TO CANCEL THAT DUE TO THE SUPPRESSION. TOO MUCH WORK TOO LITTLE RETURN.
Is there anything you can do to avoid being censored? What have you tried? I'M NOT SURE WHAT I CAN DO OTHER THAN FOCUS ON MAKING CONTENT THAT YOUTUBE FAVORS, WHICH I'M NOT INTERESTED IN DOING IF IT MEANS ABANDONING MY CHANNEL'S FOCUS OF HELPING PEOPLE TO BE MORE READY FOR EMERGENCY EVENTS.
How do you monetize your content? AD REVENUE, PATREON, PRODUCT SALES.
Are you able to contact your audience outside of your social platforms? I HAVEN'T STARTED DOING THAT YET, BUT PLAN TO.
